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He tries. He really does. To stick to his ideals, the things that make him… him. It’s doing that while also being a good person that’s the hard part. It’s fine. Most of the time he doesn’t mind what he does. After all, it’s all in the name of anarchy. But it’s hard to keep justifying everything when there’s blood on his hands and people have died. But it’s all to abolish the government, that very desire which has remained so constant throughout everything. Through the wars and violence, every time someone new takes power, everytime someone decides they need a system.
That’s the difference between him and the others. They are ever changing, always fighting for a new cause, new friends, for whatever they care about all the time. He is the constant, the one person who has held the same cause in his heart all this time, even if it’s under the pretense of fighting for one country or the other.
There’s not much he can do against the greed of the world. Violence, bloodshed, just solid reasoning, none of it ever works, that’s the thing. He’s been backing up a cause that has never had any chance, not in this world.
Nomatter what happens the people will always want someone holding their puppet strings over them, they can’t ever just accept that that’s not what’s best. That that’s only going to end in oppression, in tyranny, in an unjust ruler in an old rusted crown.
It didn’t matter anymore. The cause. The ideals. None of it mattered. For all his talk of preventing takeover he sure hadn’t managed to do much. You take down one government and another one rises in its place.
He still remembered what L’Manburg felt like, after it wasn’t really even L’Manburg anymore. After Phil showed up and everyone promptly forgot that they had just overthrown a president. When he had tried to stop everything, when he’d made his case about tyrants and history and power. When no one would listen.
He would be lying to say he hadn’t felt slightly relieved when Philza logged on, someone who would stand behind him. Someone who would be on his side.
He was going to kill the government himself. It doesn’t sound as menacing now. He can still hear all the cries of traitor, and the silence when Dream spoke up. Death to the tyrants, was it? Was that what he had said?
The fighting and the chaos, and none of it helping, but the voices were so overjoyed at the violence. Blood for the blood god, they cried, as they do ever so often. Encouraging him to make the next move and kill all of them. They don’t say exactly that of course, but the sentiment is the same. The wanting for destruction was still ever so strong. Always, always, always.
And that’s when it happened, the turning point, the moment that nothing could go back to the way it was. The explosion. Explosions really, the chain reaction that had destroyed so much. Everyone was screaming, the people the voices. There’s not much of a way to describe something like that.
And he had cheered.
And there was Phil. There in whatever had been underneath the podium. And there was Wilbur, the supposed traitor. And Phil killed him. He had watched as his best friend had killed his own son.
That was probably when it had started, that small feeling that he had barely noticed at the time, whispering that this was wrong. This is not the way that things should be. It was drowned out, drowned out by the voices screaming, telling him to go on. Finish it.
And he had, hadn’t he? He was ready to end it, and he was going to follow through. And Phil was shouting too, telling everyone to get away, that he was the traitor.
He spoke, spoke of Theseus, and heroes and of tragedy.
He still doesn’t know if he felt any regret for what he did afterwards.
Sometimes he dreams of battle. He dreams of a pulsing sticky mess of what used to be a person underneath him as he tears it apart. Ribs splinter and crack under his steady hands as organs are ripped out and find new homes on the bloody wet ground. Everything is red. Blank unseeing eyes stare up at him, the forever unspoken cry of how could you still hanging in the air.
And they watch, they all watch from afar, shouting, screaming. Oh shi- What is he doing? STOP!
They are next, their necks snapping and their teeth breaking as his sword goes through their skulls. Dark sopping bits of what used to be alive are everywhere. There are pieces of people in his hair, on his skin, and even though it’s his fault he still feels rising horror at the gore around him.
He knows it isn’t, and yet it feels so real. Everyone on the server… dead by his own hand.
Ghostbur stands, watching him, the only one left. There are tears streaming down his face, carving into him, his expression contorted with pain and loss. It takes Techno far too long to figure out why. It takes him far too long to look down at the green fabric and the dark broken wings below him. Feathers…
He staggers back and into another corpse, if it can even be called a body anymore. Was it all worth it?
His sword falls to the ground, finally satisfied with the chaos it has wrought. Heh… He can’t even see the metal anymore.
Is this what it takes? For a world freed from any government, from anyone’s control. Man will always try and place someone at the top rung, until they’re dead it seems. Until he kills them.
The voices are in his dreams too. Congratulating him on a job well done. That’s the thing about the voices, even with everything that they tell him, even with all that they drive him to do, they care. More than anything else, they care.
He left. He had gone, and he was changing. The voices were quieter away from everyone. He told himself he was giving up, that he was done. He had tried. Tried to let go. And he had. The voices still begged for blood, pleading, demanding, and he denied them.
It was over.
Until it wasn’t.
Until he was the one begging.
Please don’t make me kill all of you.
And they had come closer, ever closer. He hadn’t wanted to have to go back to how things were. With the voices louder than they had been in so long.
Please leave.
He was about to kill Tubbo. Again. The voices wanting it, maybe he did too. After all, that was who Technoblade was. He did what he had to. No regret. No remorse. Ever. Not even when the rot in his chest is so deep that he doesn’t know how he continues.
This is not a trial. It’s an execution.
Walking up the steps to the stage, his heart pounded in his chest. Voices seemed to distort, as if they weren’t really there at all.
One step in front of the other.
And there, in the world that wasn’t how it should’ve been, was Phil. Phil watching from the windows. And everything snaps back into place, into motion.
“Phil! Phil, what did they do to you?!”
And it’s so not fair. His best friend doesn’t deserve to have to watch him die.
Even with his deathgrip on the totem in his pocket, the one he’s been carefully hiding all this time, the voices cry, this is the end. He just wishes Phil didn’t have to see it.
There will be no more.
Not Wilbur is there, the Ghost of the boy he watched grow up. He’s still got that sheep, and even with his death so incredibly soon- and he is going to die- a hint of a smile still finds its way onto his face.
“I named him Friend.” Wasn’t that just like the child that used to be? Before the world had taken and twisted him till nothing was left. That’s what the world does. It breaks things.
How much has he broken since the beginning?
But Ghostbur wears a smile. He is everything Wilbur wasn’t before his death. And some desperate part of him longs to find hope in that. Even if he dies, someone will be around to smile.
It doesn’t help. His eyes widen as chaos breaks out. He doesn’t want to go.
He can’t help but watch as the anvil falls. Closer. Closer. This is it. The end.
For the first time in over twenty years, the voices are silent. The only sound in his head now is his own thoughts. It’s so incredibly lonely, and he does not want to die alone.
Please let him live.
And it is over. He is gone. HE IS DEAD.
And he is living, breathing still.
It worked.